Important med school tips

Brought to you by the microbiology department.

This week's subject: Black Sand Beach

Micro lab is ridiculously fun. This is largely because IT'S ACTUALLY A LAB. Most "labs" in med school constitute of sitting around a table with other people and either panicking each other with the minutia they don't know, or discussing the previous night's episode of House, Grey's Anatomy, or Lost, depending on your preference, until the clinical tutor yells at you. Sometimes, like in physio, it consists of arguing with your clinical tutor over type 1 diabetes because your professor has given you conflicting (ie: correct) information that the tutor is insisting isn't true (not you, neuro dude. You still rock). So they're not so much labs, which implies that you're getting to manipulate stuff you don't want on your clothes (at least to me), as "group study sessions", which is all well and good unless, like me, when you study you're so solitary and territorial that you not only get a single apartment largely for that reason, but consider peeing in the corners of it to keep out wolves.

But I was talking about micro lab.

In micro lab, it consists of donning scrubs and/or a lab coat and finding just how disgusting the world around you is.

First of all, the lab air. I'm going to really hope our agar plate was that nasty because a fly landed in it last week and not because I'm actually regularly breathing that shit in because otherwise my lungs are going to look like rotting hamburger meat and I'm going to bring some gnarly pathogens back to the US if I live that long.

Second of all, last week, since I've been wondering about the level of nasty at Black Sand Beach since I got to this school, I sprinted down the hill and raced BACK up the stairs to the lab solely to get a good solid sample of black sand beach funkiness.

This week, the results were in. Ewwwwww... It's telling when after sampling one of your colonies, you call over one of the circulating professor/tutors to ask what on earth you're seeing, follow up with "Would you swim here?" and they look through the microscope and go "nooooo".

It's also telling that after my run to and fro last week, I was quite literally dripping with sweat so suggested one of my other group members take her swab from my armpit, to which she replied "Ewww!" before promptly shoving the swab up her nose. Details.